Hail Sun—behold
Our festal garments—
The Fire in our Words—²
Help me shatter this Darkness and
Smash this night: to break this shadow
Into countless whirling Dreams of Sun!³
Sun will never—save within itself—see
Night: for the Blackness it spurts out
Curdles to Light all around it.⁴
The Self and the Poem are one—
And our poems, though the makings of
Our self, are no less the makings of the Sun:⁵
We’re Sun and our bodies shine & burn like Stars!⁶
The orb of the Earth is lighted brighter & brighter as it turns
Until at last there is a particular moment when the eye
Sees the Sun and so when the Soul perceives God.⁷
My Soul, you are in the ether with
All the other Scattershot Suns …⁸
We, Travelers, walking to the Sun, can’t see
Ahead, but looking back the very Light that blinded us,
Shows us the way we came—along which Blessings now
Appear; and we, by blessing Brightly Lit, keep going
Toward that blessed Light that yet to us is dark—⁹
We Die, and when our breath is done,
Take up our simple wardrobe—
And set out for the Sun!¹⁰
¹ Rajiv Mohabir, Tattvamasi, You Are That
² Jean Joubert tr. Denise Levertov, April, Again
³ Langston Hughes, As I Grew Older
⁴ Eugene Guillevic tr. Denise Levertov, The Sun
⁵ Wallace Stevens, The Planet on the Table
⁶ Joy Harjo, She Had Some Horses
⁷ Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted by James Miller in Examined Lives
⁸ Paul Celan tr. Nikolai Popov & Heather McHugh, Erratic
⁹ Wendell Berry, We Travelers
¹⁰ Emily Dickinson, She Died